Real Progress

This month has seen real progess as Dave and co started properly on our barn. January had two main targets, getting all the internal block walls up, and laying the beam and block floor. The walls (and lintels to make door openings) have been miraculously quick, the beam and block has been quite frankly a pain for everyone.

However, its now in and done, Dave has put all the sub floor drains in, and fed the waterpipes under the floor.

(Top) Mick making openings and linking existing brickwork to new blockwork.

(Bottom) Double doorframes from kitchen.

(Top) Delivery of the floor beams.

(Middle and Bottom) The beams in situ, and ready to take blocks. Twin beams are where walls will go.

December Images

Final Dig Out, the dark area on the walls shows how much!

Re-using our old bricks as part of the sub-base, green and cost effective.

Footings dug, note (if you are interested) the bricks topped off with compacted millwaste, giving 150mm of sub-base in total.

Footings concrete, we've elected to use the 'mix on site machines' brilliant, I'll never use readymix again.

Barrowing the concrete.

Dave doing the skilful bit (Levelling the footings).


Pouring the footing for the kitchens folding sliding doors. 1m deep, and I dug half of it!


Laying the sub-floor walls. These are the below ground sections of walls that will be under the main slab, and damp proof membrane.

Re-using some existing bricks where possible.

Once the sub-floor walls were finished, the whole area was blinded off with sand, and then the entire floor and walls was covered in 1200 guage damp proof membrane.

The whole floor and walls covered, taped and ready for pouring the slab.

Preparing to barrow the concrete.

We have a floor.

Next post: Walls.

2007 Update (just in time)

Yet again I've left it practically two months to update the blog, in fact its been a few hints from friends and family that finds me now on the last day of the year trying to quickly bring things up to speed.

Since the last post we had a fantastic weekend when Jen and Fred came to stay, picked up shovels, breakers and barrows and really got stuck in. Many thanks guys for all your help, even the kids got on with breaking up the concrete in the old workshop floor!

November found me finally finishing all the major dig out from the barn, once the concrete and rubble were out, it was a fairly speedy dig down into the soil and clay, using a combination of midi-digger and tipper lorry to cart the spoil out. This ended up another 80 tonnes of dig out. By the end of November and with so much work to be done on the underpinning next door it was now clear that Dave would not be starting our build in the near future I got some of my own lads from work in to do prepare his way.

Under Dave's watchful eye its been a great success, see next post for images. The lads have seemed to enjoy the challenge of something new, all their skills are fairly transferable, and Dave has been holding a masterclass in each of the stages, combined with through to check on everything as its progressed. In the five weeks before Christmas they've finalised the dig out, laid all the brick and millwaste sub-floor, dug footings, poured the concrete (with Dave), laid all the walls to sub-floor height. Sanded the sub-base and sheeted it with the radon barrier/damp proof membrane. Poured the concrete slab (with Dave again doing the cerebral bits) and started the internal walls.

Time Lapse (click on image to watch)

Image Update

Some non-building work images of our new views:

A whole months update

Dear oh dear, it seems we've left it a whole month to update the blog.

I think we have a decent excuse of being just too busy, but I'll try and recap as best we can. Dave and the lads started as promised and set too knocking down what walls we'd left. I tried to break up all of our concrete (see images from last post), but had to have the digger back for one more weekend to finish it. I used the small JCB to knock down my outbuilding and Rob used his excavator to knock down the bigger walls of Paul's outbuildings. We then got (neighbour) Rob to load and cart it and the brick rubble away, some 150 odd tonnes to date and counting.

Although Dave spent equal time on both Paul and Cathy's and our barns in the first week, from week two we made the decision that Dave would work Paul and Cathy's up to internal block walls for the next few weeks. There are two reasons for this: There are some complications to our initial build, (mainly to do with the dig out to achieve our new floor level, (in a nutshell the floor level needs to be some 300-400mm down from where we found it, plus to meet Part L the new floor is some 375mm deep thats a 700+ dig out). This is a hell of a volume which I'm not sure I'm happy about, so I'm working out where we can best set our ground and first floor levels to get the most out of the building; mainly though I want to do as much preparatory work myself, at least the demolishing of walls, dig out and hard core. As this is clearly weekend work I've got at least three solid weekends of this so it makes great sense for Dave to crack on with Paul and Cathy's first.

Once the outbuildings were down I rang our new planning officer Paul Taylor to see if he could visit to see how awful the South East elevation appears and to have a pre-application discussion as to whether we could clad that whole façade in timber boards, something I have always loved but had looked up until now unlikely due to the tight restraints on barns (no chimneys, no extra openings, no porches etc.), less than a week later he rang to say that the council would approve any plans to clad that side. This is a seriously good bit of news, this side is for me the most important as its the side that faces the gardens, and as a result the side we will most regularly be looking at.

Sadly Paul and Cathy had some bad news, the front and part of the North West wall have little or no footings and the building inspector and the structural warranty inspectors have asked or underpinning, luckily our fabulous structural engineer Graham has calculated that Dave can use concrete lintels to support the walls.

It finally looks like a building site now with skips galore and material deliveries becoming more regular. As we are proper self builders in as much as we are managing our own project and employing our labour directly its our responsibility to ensure site health and safety, so Paul's organised protective fencing, site warning signs, and I've had to get accident books and first aid supplies, (all of which are a legal requirement).

Other mundane jobs we've been doing are grinding the steel beams that we are keeping and treating with rust protective paint prior to Dave encasing them in block work, Paul has been organising services, and I've had the kids sorting and stacking the bricks that we can re-use.

Work Actually Starts

Dave has surprised us all by telling he is starting on Monday. This is actually earlier than promised, and as anyone who's had building work knows, a week before kick off you get the obligatory "We'll be another month because (tick as appropriate) 'Vans been stolen' 'Its been raining' 'Deliveries have been delayed' 'I've lost a couple of good workers' etc excuse. So this is great news all round.

In order to prepare for Dave I've been doing a little bit of demolishing. Aided by my little helpers.
At the request of my sister (that means there are three people at least looking at this blog) who has asked for 'More images to cheer it up' Here's one of a nice early morning sky. Hope that's the thing you had in mind Jen.

Update Images 2

We had our first major site delivery this week, all the way from Germany, of course with German efficiency it was three days early. The delivery was our pair of water treatment plants. The basic gist is that all our waste water (and I mean all) goes in, and tap water comes out a few days later. That's what the rep said anyway, but I wouldn't drink it myself. Our driver was Gerhard who wore socks and sandals, a style faux pas we had to forgive him for. Paul made him a coffee with four spoons of sugar, no wonder he was early.He seemed quite happy to pose for our blog, saying that our neighbour (and vendor) Rob and son Charlie did all the work manhandling the things down.

Update Images 1

How to upset the new neighbours when the Pikeys moved in.

A small amount of skilled pruning.

This is when I asked if it was possible to get it right in the corner.

'What, like in the field' says Chris.

On Site At Last

NEW VIEW

This post comes two weeks late due to the unbelievable service one gets from BT. Now we are in the sticks there's no cable, and therefore no competition for BT, who kept me waiting 10 days for a telephone line, don't ask about Broadband, that's going to follow 7 days later. Actually the whole BT farrago has pointed out one thing, and that is so far if I had a list of Fame and a list of Shame, BT would be the only member of the Shame side, so I suppose now would be a good time to give some well earned thanks to the Fame side. The whole buying/selling procedure was made far less fraught by the attentions of both our Estate Agents and Solicitors, whilst their opposite numbers seemed to be intent on creating confusion and delay. We have only ever used one Estate Agent to sell our houses, James Sellicks who took a mere 3 hours to procure a sale on our last house, this sale took three days to get an offer we accepted, and they managed to get seven offers in those three days. I'd like to personally thank Sarah and James for their timely advice and help, and the way they nudged and cajoled others to bring things to a practical conclusion. Just to put our sale into some perspective, we found the barns the week before our holiday, offered on the Monday of the holiday week, had our offer turned down, made an improved offer on the Tuesday which was accepted the next day.

I rang James to say 'I need you to sell my house, quickly'.
He said 'I'll pop round on Friday'.
'Ah I'm in Italy'
'When do you go?'
'Friday morning'
'I'll see you this afternoon then'

He came, he took a spare key, he told me how much he'd ask for the house, and then how much we'd get if we were willing to wait a month or so for the right buyer to come along. He said all the usual Estate Agent things like, 'Its perfect guys, buyers will be fighting for a house like this' 'I'll get it in the paper the weekend before you return, we'll organise viewings from the day you get back. He was right, on all accounts. Except he got the month or so price in three days.

As with James its all about personal knowledge and recommendation, when it came to Solicitors I had no real indication of who we should approach, but Cathy had only one name she would be happy to deal with, Eric Roberts at Roberts Rose specialist conveyancers. We found Eric to be a man of great charisma, but with an underlying shrewdness and intellect. From the moment we all (the four of us, (squashed in)) sat down in his office we had the feeling that someone was really looking out for us, as opposed to simply doing a job of work. It would be unfair to point a finger at our buyers solicitor but in the end her motto we made up was 'What I promise today won't be done tomorrow' Cathy and Paul fared no better with their buyer opting for a 'Call Centre' style package. This was no worry to Eric, who like a pike chasing a pair of minnows pushed and prodded them into doing what was required. Unfortunately for Paul and Cathy our buyers solicitor caused a real delay causing us to have to put back our completion date after they had committed to theirs. Two weeks of borrowed flats entailed for them, for which I feel very regretful. It was better news on our vendors font, Eric had known his solicitor for many years so lines of communication were much easier. I'd like to say thank you to Rachel too for keeping a calm perspective whenever I had a wobble.

From a financial point of view we were lucky in Stephanie Heald's recommendation of Trust Financial Planning who have been incredibly proactive in all their efforts with the complications of a self build, its assurance, insurance and our liabilities. Poor old Dan, the proprietor had made an appointment to see us about pensions and life assurances the week before we found the barns, so when he did turn up he found a house full of prospective purchasers and us needing to talk self-build mortgages and public liability insurance instead. Once Dan had gone through a list of needs he passed us into the capable hands of James who has been tirelessly proactive in his research of the best buys for our needs. Paul and I still probably speak to him bi-weekly still, and it was great to know that one part of the build process was being carried out in someone elses capable hands, rather than our own.